{"id":19192,"date":"2016-10-24T23:17:06","date_gmt":"2016-10-24T15:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/apollo-11-moon-ship-may-go-on-tour-for-50th-anniversary-and-stop-by-seattle\/"},"modified":"2016-10-24T23:17:06","modified_gmt":"2016-10-24T15:17:06","slug":"apollo-11-moon-ship-may-go-on-tour-for-50th-anniversary-and-stop-by-seattle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/apollo-11-moon-ship-may-go-on-tour-for-50th-anniversary-and-stop-by-seattle\/","title":{"rendered":"Apollo 11 moon ship may go on tour for 50th anniversary \u2013 and stop by Seattle"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_284243\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-284243\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-284243\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/161024-apollo-command-630x422.jpg\" alt=\"Apollo 11 command module\" width=\"630\" height=\"422\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/161024-apollo-command-630x422.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/161024-apollo-command-768x514.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/161024-apollo-command-1240x830.jpg 1240w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/161024-apollo-command.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-284243\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Apollo 11 command module, shown here at the Smithsonian\u2019s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., is due to go on a road trip in 2019. (Credit: Smithsonian Institution \/ NASM)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The Smithsonian\u2019s National Air and Space Museum is laying the groundwork for a 50th-anniversary traveling exhibit featuring Apollo 11&nbsp;space hardware, including the moon mission\u2019s command module \u2013 and Seattle\u2019s Museum of Flight could be a prime stop.<\/p>\n<p>The 2019 road show is the Smithsonian\u2019s preferred solution to an awkward problem: what to do with artifacts from the historic 1969 moon landing while a section of the museum in Washington, D.C., is being renovated.<\/p>\n<p>The renovation project is being done in phases over the course of several years, and some sections of the museum will remain open throughout. But ironically, the area where the museum intends to put its state-of-the-art \u201cDestination Moon\u201d exhibit will be closed in 2019, during&nbsp;the 50th&nbsp;anniversary of the first mission to put humans on the moon.<\/p>\n<p>Some \u201cDestination Moon\u201d&nbsp;artifacts will go on temporary display&nbsp;in alternate Smithsonian exhibit spaces. Other pieces of hardware \u2013 including the command module, known as Columbia \u2013 are destined to hit the road.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re in the process of working out a traveling exhibition,\u201d space historian Roger Launius, the museum\u2019s associate director of collections and curatorial affairs, told GeekWire today.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Apollo 11 Command Module | 3D Documentation\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Xyiy2fiV_Mc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The event would be a throwback to 1970, when the command module and other Apollo 11 artifacts went on a two-year-long, 50-state tour. \u201cWe can\u2019t go around the world, but we can go around the country,\u201d Launius said.<\/p>\n<p>Launius&nbsp;said it\u2019s too early to announce which cities would be on the schedule for the 2019 traveling exhibit, but Seattle would be a natural candidate. Doug King, the Museum of Flight\u2019s president and CEO, declined to comment on the matter.<\/p>\n<p>The National Air and Space Museum and the Museum of Flight already are sharing a treasure trove of Apollo-Saturn F-1 rocket engine parts that were recovered from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in 2013, thanks to an expedition backed by Amazon founder&nbsp;Jeff Bezos.<\/p>\n<p>Apollo 11 engine artifacts would be part of the road show, Launius said.<\/p>\n<p>Bezos mentioned the possibility of having the Apollo 11 road show come to Seattle during an impromptu chat at the Museum of Flight\u2019s Pathfinder Awards banquet on Saturday night. Later, on stage, he recounted the thrill of the 2013 expedition to retrieve the rocket engine parts:<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on the mission to recover the Apollo 11 F-1 rocket engines from the seafloor\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/sO6ao-R8vzM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Bezos recalled that at the start of the project, it took him only about 15 minutes\u2019 worth of searching the Web to identify&nbsp;the general area where&nbsp;the Saturn V rockets&nbsp;used for the Apollo missions&nbsp;dropped their first stages into the Atlantic.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat was the only part of this that would be&nbsp;easy,\u201d Bezos joked. \u201cIt got very hard from there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>After the parts were finally located, Bezos and his family accompanied a salvage team to recover the artifacts.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy mom was the only woman on a ship with 60 people for three weeks,\u201d Bezos said. \u201cThere were a bunch of Norwegian sailors and people from all over the world. On the very first day, I got a little bit of a sense of what I was in for. The captain of the vessel came to me, and he said, \u2018Look, we\u2019ve never had a woman on the boat before, so I went ahead and took the liberty of removing all the pornography from the common area.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI said, \u2018OK, thank you.\u2019 Probably a fine idea,\u201d Bezos said, drawing laughter from the crowd. \u201cBut it worked. Everything was fantastic. The crew and the people we hired were very professional.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"New Shepard In-flight Escape Test\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ESc_0MgmqOA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Now Bezos has to decide what to do with another prized space artifact: a test spaceship that his Blue Origin venture sent on five suborbital trips to outer space.<\/p>\n<p>Bezos has promised to send the New Shepard rocket ship to a museum, and that\u2019s piqued interest from a good number of institutions \u2013 including the Museum of Flight. But Bezos told GeekWire it\u2019s too early to make the decision.<\/p>\n<p>First, the spacecraft will be brought back to Blue Origin\u2019s headquarters in Kent, south of Seattle. Bezos said the hardware&nbsp;would be disassembled and analyzed to find out what worked well, and what could work better. \u201cWe\u2019re going to learn as much as we can,\u201d he told GeekWire.<\/p>\n<p>Bezos plans to reveal his decision on New Shepard\u2019s next destination after the analysis is complete. And who knows? Perhaps&nbsp;Blue Origin, like the Smithsonian, will take its space history show on the road.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Apollo 11 command module, shown here at the Smithsonian\u2019s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., is due to go on a road trip in 2019. (Credit: Smithsonian Institution \/ NASM) The Smithsonian\u2019s National Air and Space Museum is laying the groundwork for a 50th-anniversary traveling exhibit featuring Apollo 11&nbsp;space hardware, including the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1758,1046,4450,3167,4029],"class_list":["post-19192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-apollo-11","tag-jeff-bezos","tag-museum-of-flight","tag-smithsonian","tag-space-history"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19192"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}